This is a request for three years of support under the new investigators awards program. The proposed research will test the hypothesis that subjects participating in a program that (a) allows client selection of weight control activities with preestablished effectiveness; (b) focuses on assessing the difficulty of the activities and deriving a realistic payoff for each one; and (c) uses an interactive interview to identify ways of reducing difficulty, will achieve significantly greater weight loss and maintenance than control subjects participating in three standard treatment comparison programs. In Phase 1, 45 professionals involved in dietary, exercise or behavior modification approaches to weight control will judge objective effectiveness of a large number of recommended activities, and give their perceptions of the difficulty and likelihood of adoption that would generally be associated with the tasks by clients. Using established statistical criteria, 50 of these activities will be selected for presentation to experimental subjects. In Phase 2, 180 mild to moderately obese men and women between the ages of 18 and 70 in three weight control programs will be assigned randomly to standard treatment (control) groups or the experimental program incorporating the above features but conforming in time frame and format to each comparison program. Baseline measures of body size, i.e., weight, body mass index, adipomuscular ratio, and lifetime weight histories will be taken. Depending on which program they are in, subjects will be re-measured in two weeks and/or at the end of the program. In addition, six-month and one-year followup measurements will be taken. Analysis of the difference in these measures will be made using t-tests of differences for related samples, ANCOVA and MANOVA. The long-term objectives are to test the approach with other risk-reducing lifestyle changes, and refining it so that it is simple and flexible enough to be added to measures employed by nurses in a variety of settings in their patient teaching for health promotion.